Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) (11 page)

“I play a lute,” Aoide said. “Rhodia has a
silver harp. And there’s pan pipes and a drum. But the instruments
can change depending on who plays them. If a fairy blew on Neus’
pan pipes, they might turn into a flute.”

“So what do they look like now?” Hoke
asked.

“It depends who took them,” Aoide said.

“You don’t have any idea who it was?” Hoke
asked.

“Nor do we know their intentions,” Icarus
said. “The Queen’s seer tells us they have left the realm of
Faerie. These instruments could cause incredible destruction in the
human world. In the hands of anyone not properly trained by the
Musicians’ Guild…”

“It could be a nightmare,” Aoide said.

“The man-world.” Hoke lifted his hat and
scratched around in his stringy, dirty hair. “Haven’t been there in
a century or ten. So, we don’t know what the things look like or
who has ‘em or why. They’ll take some time to track down.
Buttercake’s my best sniffer, though. Next fairy!”

Aoide backed off and let Buttercake sniff
Rhodia’s hand. Rhodia giggled and tried to pet the unicorn, but the
little creature skittered back out of reach.

“Hands off my cornhorse!” Hoke barked. “And
where’s the scents for the other two instruments?”

“Here.” Aoide opened another pouch. It
contained a swatch of Skezg’s filthy shirt, to give the unicorn the
ogre’s smell. It also had a locket of Neus’ white fur, since he
didn’t wear clothes. The faun let the shaggy goat fur on his hips
and legs serve as trousers. He didn’t even wear shoes, because the
bottoms of his stubby feet and toes were coated with hard hoof.

Buttercake sniffed inside the pouch for a
couple of minutes. Then she stuck out her tongue and backed
away.

“What about the other unicorns?” Icarus
asked. Cinnamon and Berrymuffin had wandered away a little bit, to
slurp from a pool of sugar water.

“If you think I’m taking more than one
unicorn up to man-world, then you’re madder than Queen Mab.”

“I warned you!” Icarus reached for his sword,
but Aoide grabbed his arm and shushed him.

“It’s just a figure of speech,” Hoke said. He
snorted, then spat a ball of bright orange elf-snot into a puddle
near Icarus’s boot.

Icarus opened his mouth. Aoide was pretty
sure that whatever he said next would lead to an argument or a
fight, so she cut him off.

“Is that all you need to begin your search?”
Aoide asked Hoke.

“Sounds like that’s all you have,” Hoke said.
“Do we at least know through which doorway the thief entered the
man-world? Was it Glastonbury Door?”

“We don’t know,” Aoide said.

Hoke shook his head and lowered the brim of
his hat. He resumed sitting under the shade of the leafy sugar cane
by his hut. Buttercake nibbled some flowering weeds beside him.

“When do you intend to begin searching?”
Icarus asked.

“After we’ve had time to rest.” Hoke pulled
the hat down over his eyes. “Buttercake’s a delicate one. Needs her
beauty sleep.”

“This is urgent!” Icarus snarled.

“Then I’d be better get plenty of sleep,”
Hoke said. “Don’t want me slipping up.”

“He said he’ll do it, Icarus,” Aoide
said.

“He’d better. Or we’ll show him that Her
Majesty Queen Mab does, indeed, rule the swamplands!” Icarus
stepped away, out through the break in the wall of cane.

“What a sourdrop,” Hoke said.

“He’s kind of cranky,” Aoide said. “We really
do appreciate your help. We really, really need our instruments
back. Sorry about Mister Whineyboots out there.”

“If they can be found, Buttercake will find
them,” Hoke said from under his hat. Buttercake looked up and
blinked at her name, then resumed grazing.

Aoide and Rhodia walked toward the gap in the
sugarcane.

“Will this really work?” Rhodia whispered.
“Those unicorns look useless.”

“They say unicorns are more than what they
appear to be,” Aoide whispered. She nudged Rhodia’s arm and
pointed.

Cinnamon raised her head from a sugary pool,
grasping a black and red swamp cobra in her mouth. Its hooded head
arched above the unicorn’s face, and its fiery red eyes glared down
at her. The cobra hissed, with its long fangs dripping venom, and
poised to strike the unicorn’s soft nose.

Cinnamon snapped her head from side to side,
whipping the cobra like a rope. Cracking sounds burst all along the
snake’s spine. When Cinnamon finally stopped shaking, the long
cobra lay limp in her mouth. She sucked up the cobra’s body like a
noodle. When she’d devoured it, she belched, her ears flattening
and her mouth flaring wide. Then she trotted off into the
swamp.

Jason decided to stop by The Creamery in the
middle of Friday afternoon, well after the lunch rush but before
people got off work, so the place would be as quiet as it got. Erin
sometimes talked about being bored that time of day, with nothing
to do.

As he rode his bike through the streets of
the little town, he imagined how it might go. She’d be happy to
take a break. They could have an ice cream at one of the little
tables outside on the sidewalk (and he’d have a cone of Chocolate
Cashew Snowslide, his favorite flavor). He was determined to tell
Erin how he felt about her.

Normally, the idea of talking about such
things created a tense ball of nerves deep in his gut and stopped
his mouth from working properly. The more he played his new guitar,
though, the bolder he felt. It made him feel like taking risks.

He’d even brought the song “Angel Sky,” again
on a folded page of notebook paper in his pocket, though he’d
rewritten some of the verses a number of times since his last
attempt to present the song to the band. Maybe telling Erin how
much he liked her and giving her the song at the same time would be
too much, and she would deem him a creepy stalker guy. But having
it in his pocket was like a statement to himself that he was going
to make things happen today.

He rode along the sidewalk and glanced into
the plate-glass front window of The Creamery. Erin was there behind
the ice cream counter, in her paper Creamery hat and white apron.
She leaned over the counter, talking intently to someone.

He passed the huge ice-cream-cone-shaped
chalkboard in the window. On the other side, he could see Erin was
talking to Zach, her boyfriend. He took her hand, and Erin smiled,
shaking her head about something while she spoke.

All his nerves crashed. It was scary enough
trying to talk about his feelings with her. He definitely wasn’t
going to do it with her current boyfriend right there. It would
just turn into a fight with Zach—not exactly the afternoon he’d
envisioned.

Jason turned the next corner and rode up the
block, so he wouldn’t pass The Creamery again. It was a bad idea,
anyway. She was already with someone. He had no reason to think she
would rather be with him.

A few hours later, Jason stepped up to the
counter at Buddy McSlawburger’s, facing a long line of customers.
The Friday night shift was busy. He saw a number of people he knew
from school, and all of them seemed to be pointing at Jason and
smiling at each other.

Like every McSlawburger’s employee, Jason
wore the trademark funny hat. It was like a baseball cap, but with
a giant bouncing “slawburger” sewn to the top. The thing was
stuffed with cotton and included a bun, burger, cheese and slaw,
all made of felt. The top bun tilted jauntily to one side, making
the tall fake burger bounce and sway every time you turned your
head. There was even a spring inside it to enhance the effect. It
looked especially goofy with a group of employees running around
behind the counter, the ridiculously tall burgers on their hats
swaying and jiggling all over the place.

“Welcome to Buddy McSlawburger’s,” Jason said
to his first customer, a hefty tattooed biker couple. “Would you
like a Slawburger Special today?”

“No!” the fat, bearded biker guy said. “I
want two of them cheeseburgers, but none of that slaw junk. I hate
that stuff. What do you want, baby?”

“A hot dog,” the woman said. “
No
slaw.
Got that?
No
slaw.”

“Two slawburgers with cheese, hold the slaw,”
Jason said into the microphone. “One slawdog, hold the slaw.”

“And I want some fries,” the biker guy added.
“But none of that canned chili junk on it.”

“One chili-cheese fry, hold the
chili-cheese,” Jason said.

Jason’s next customer was his math teacher,
Coach Bauer.

“Hey there, kiddo,” the Coach said. “Kiddo”
was his generic name for any student who didn’t participate in
sports or cheerleading. “Double cheeseburger. None of the slaw, I
hate that stuff.”

“Double slawburger with cheese, hold the
slaw,” Jason said into the mike. It was already turning into a long
night.

A group of four sophomores came to his
register next, two boys and two girls. They’d been among those
pointing and smiling about him. Jason sighed. As if his day weren’t
bad enough, now he was about to get ridiculed by younger kids.

“Hi, Jason!” one girl said, waving. Jason had
no idea what her name was.

“Uh, hi,” Jason said. “Welcome to
McSlawburger’s.”

“I told you it was him,” one of the guys
said.

“You’re even cuter than in the video!” the
other girl said. The guy next to her scowled a little.

“Video?” Jason asked.

“We watched it like twenty times!” the first
girl said. The two girls leaned together, held up their index
fingers like microphones, and sang a verse of Erin’s “Cinderella
Night” in screeching, off-key voices:

Cinderella, Cinderella beware,

Don’t give yourself up on a dare…

“Would you budge along?” a crabby-looking
older man in a plaid shirt said behind them. “Some of us are trying
to order food here.”

“What video?” Jason asked.

“I told you it wasn’t him,” the scowling boy
said.

“It is!” the scowling boy’s girlfriend said.
“You play the guitar, right?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. Both the girls squealed.
It was so unexpected that he jumped a little. “So, can I take your
order?” he asked.

“When are you putting out another video?” the
first girl asked.

“Where’s your next concert?” the non-scowling
boy asked. “We’ll totally come.”

“I don’t know…” Jason said.

“Does your band have a Facebook page?” the
boy asked.

“A MySpace?” the second girl asked.

“Not really. How do you know about my band,
again?” Jason asked.

“Nobody cares about your band!” barked the
man in plaid.

“Sorry, I have to work,” Jason said.

“Why are you working
here
when you can
play like that?” the first girl asked.

“Hurry it up!” the plaid-jacket man
shouted.

“Do you guys just want slawburgers?” Jason
asked the four kids.

“No slaw,” the first girl said, and the
others hurried to agree.

“Four slawburgers, no slaw,” Jason said into
the microphone.

The second girl grabbed a napkin and wrote on
it. “I’m Wendy,” she said. “Call me when you’re playing somewhere.
Or just, you know, if you want to talk. About anything.” She handed
him the napkin, which had her phone number and email address under
the McSlawburger’s logo. The boy who was with her scowled even
more.

“I’d better give him my phone number, too.”
The second girl jotted it down on another napkin and handed it to
Jason. “Just in case there’s a concert,” she explained to her
boyfriend.

“You can pick up your burgers at the end of
the counter,” Jason said. He didn’t know what to do with the
napkins, so he stuffed them in his pocket.

“Bye, Jason!” the two girls said as they
walked to the pick-up area. Then they broke down giggling, grabbing
each others’ arms. The guy who seemed to like Jason waved, too,
while the other one kept scowling as he walked away.

Jason took the man in the plaid shirt’s
order—slawburger, hold the slaw. Then there were more kids from
school talking about Jason’s “video.” Over the next hour or so,
Jason collected phone numbers from five girls and two guys, asking
to know when the band would play again.

When he finally got his fifteen-minute break,
Jason walked back into the kitchen and checked his phone. He had to
keep it turned off during work, because the assistant manager,
Mona, couldn’t tolerate employees using cell phones.

There were several texts from Mitch,
insisting that Jason call him right away. One text linked to a
YouTube video.

“Hey, Tadd,” Jason said to the guy at the
french-fry station, who was in his grade.

“Huh?” Tadd looked up from the big can of
McSlawburger’s Chili Cheese, which he was spooning onto a basket of
fries.

“Do you have your laptop here?” Jason asked.
He knew Tadd brought it to work to use the fast-food restaurant’s
free Wi-Fi during his breaks.

“Oh, yeah,” Tadd said.

“Mind if I borrow it?”

“Sure thing. Great video, dude. Though next
time, I’d recommend a higher quality camera. Maybe a tripod. I’m
into handheld as much as the next guy, but that video was swinging
all over the place.”

“Yeah, some sixth grade kid in Mitch’s
neighborhood shot it with her phone.”

“Kid with a phone. Very raw. Very real.
Breaking boundaries. I like it.”

“Thanks…” Jason said, and he continued on
to the back door.

He sat on the uncomfortable concrete bench
out back, and he finally saw the video everyone was talking
about.

It was from yesterday, Jason and Erin and
Mitch playing “Cinderella Night” at Mitch’s house. The viewpoint
bounced wildly from the band in the garage, to the kids dancing in
the driveway and front yard, the sky, the street, the grass and
shrubbery outside Mitch’s house. Jason remembered the middle school
girl who’d been waving her iPhone around while dancing. She must
have uploaded this.